


Mystery of Love

by hisghost



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Call Me By Your Name Fusion, Inspired by Call Me By Your Name, M/M, Professor Oliver (Call Me By Your Name), Sad Oliver (Call Me By Your Name)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-02-19 12:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 18,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22911361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisghost/pseuds/hisghost
Summary: And sometimes I wonder,If we had met in a different time,In a different place,Somewhere where all the stars were aligned,Would we still have reached for them?AU in which Elio and Oliver meet in 2020 New York City.Took a lot of elements from the novel, some might not make sense if you haven't read it. Obviously Andre Aciman is a gift to this world and I don’t take credit for any of his gifts to us.Please leave comments they will make my day :)[COMPLETED]
Relationships: Elio Perlman & Samuel Perlman, Marzia/Elio Perlman, Oliver & Elio Perlman, Oliver/Elio Perlman, Oliver/Oliver's Fiancée (Call Me By Your Name)
Comments: 218
Kudos: 179





	1. Chapter 1

_Summer, 2020_

_Somewhere in New York City_

The first thing I noticed about him was the white underside of his arms. 

White, pale, and smooth, flowing into the rest of his tanned skin the way a river flows into an ocean. His entire being seemed to move in this rhythm, as he sauntered into the coffee shop, philosophy textbooks and a Macbook balanced in one arm while the other nestled the hand of a vanilla blonde in its crevice. 

_Easy._

_Effortless._

“Good morning, what can I get for you, sir?” I offered him a copy of our menu, my eyes never leaving the pale, white skin that peeked out from under his billowy blue sleeves. 

“Large black coffee for me, iced latte for the missus.” He smirked at the girl on his arm, who giggled like a swooned schoolgirl. 

“No problem, can I get a name for your order?”

“Yeah, put it under Oliver. Thanks, man. Later!” 

And with a swipe of his card and the clink of a few coins into my tip jar, he was gone, whisked away to the counter to pick up his drinks and then out the door, all the while with blondie clinging to his arm like it was the only thing keeping her upright. I wondered if she liked him for the smooth underbelly of his arms that he hid under his tanned muscles. But I thought this was probably not the case because unlike him, I was nothing but white, pale smoothness, and girls like that never seemed to like me. I wondered what else he was hiding, under his perfectly styled auburn locks and perfectly chiseled Greek nose. 

“Wanna close up that mouth, Elio?” Lea chuckled. 

Lea was, to put it lightly, a feminist who abhorred every and any man who walked upon this earth. Piercings lined her earlobes like lollipops in the window of a candy shop, and her hair was dyed an alarmingly red color that failed to cover the brown roots that sprouted from her scalp. In the summer she would wear sandals to work when she wasn’t supposed to, and she always had a rusty silver toe ring on her middle toe. I don’t think she ever took that ring off.

I wondered if the skin under the ring was as pale as the skin under Oliver’s arms, or maybe if the cheap metal had discolored it to be yellow and blue. 

She had hated me too, at first. Consumed with her idea that all men were trash, but to be frank, I didn’t blame her. As the years passed, customers came and went through the glass doors, some of them nice, some of them not, but Lea was always there at six in the morning with a smile that made even the muffins on the counter blush. I remember when I first began working here, her earlobes were made of nothing but skin and her silky brown hair swept in waves at her shoulders. Her face was beautiful, and it still is, nothing but clear, tanned skin and doe eyes framed with thick lashes. Men leered at her, left the sweat of their fingertips on small pieces of paper with a messy conglomeration of numbers, slipped it into her tip jar, into the pockets of her smock, sometimes even into the back pocket of her jeans, and she never did anything but plaster a smile and say: have a nice day! 

Fuck them, I said one day, maybe they shouldn’t have a nice day. 

Lea decided she liked me after that. 

And I remember one day she came into work at six in the morning and the skin of her neck and forearms were blue and purple with the indentations of the past night’s rough touch still on them, and the rims of her eyes were red and moist. She didn’t smile that day, and the muffins were stale. I didn’t ask her what happened, it was private. And I didn’t need to anyway, because I knew. 

The garden she had cultivated all her life, her garden of pretty friends and pretty boys and cropped shirts that were always tied in a knot above her belly button, had suddenly been ravaged with roses that pricked her when she tried to pick them. And suddenly, her perfect garden was threatening to swallow her whole, crop top and all, into a vast expanse even she did not know the destination of. And so the week after that she shaved her head and pierced her body and suddenly all the men who had salivated at her became scared, like the little cowards they were, of this woman who decided she no longer wanted to share her space with the thorns that pierced her. 

And through all of this, she never took off that _damn_ toe ring. 

I’m looking at it now, peeking out of her tattered flip flops that are certainly violating at least ten different health codes. “What do you mean?” I feigned innocence. “My mouth is perfectly closed.”

“Okay, whatever you say sweetie! Don’t hurt yourself chasing after that monster of a man.” She laughed again and left to mop the floors. 

I hated it when she called me sweetie. It made me feel small. She was a few years younger than me but she always said things that were wiser than anything that would ever sprout from my lips. Damn her. 

But she was wise because she knew me, perhaps better than I even knew myself. She knew I would spend my days chasing after men who would do nothing but cleave the walls of my heart, letting the blood rush out and out and out until there wasn’t enough left for the rest of my body, until my hands and my toes and my eyelids turned blue from the lack of it, and the flow of blood which once spread to my fingertips and into the tip of the pen, from which words were supposed to flow, simply stopped, and the ink became dry and decrepit.

And every time they left the walls of my heart grew stronger and straighter to prepare for the next atrophy. But the stronger these walls grew the more the voices that screamed inside were heard only as whispers. How they wished to break out and fly free like the birds in the sky, screaming and screaming and screaming into air laced with fresh silk and primrose. It became harder and harder for anyone to get in at all, and almost all stopped trying. Even the ghosts were too afraid to sleep here.

She was right. He was a monster of a man, just like the rest of them. 

I didn’t think I would ever see him again, but he was here again the next day. Almost exactly the same except the girl was no longer on his arm, and he had exchanged his billowy blue shirt with a dark green button down with the first two buttons undone. The tuft of chest hair that peaked through the cloth screamed at me to notice it, to look at it, to see if the skin on his chest was as smooth as the skin under his arms. 

“Hey, you again!”

He squinted at the name tag on my chest. I liked the small wrinkles it produced at the corners of his eyes. 

“Elio, right? Can you do me a solid and grab me another black coffee, this dissertation will not write itself.”

“No problem, Oliver was it?” 

“Yeah, thanks. Later!” 

Again, gone, the chest hair, the smooth arms whisked away with a few clinks in the tip jar and a tinkling of the bells at the front door. 

_Easy._

_Effortless._

One glimpse was enough. 

Two, and all would be damned.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone :)
> 
> I am so happy people are reading my musings, I hope you can all get something out of my rambling brain. 
> 
> *Trigger Warning* for this chapter, there is a slight mention of sexual assault. It is very brief, but please be aware.
> 
> As always, please leave a comment, they make me so so happy.

Everything in the body works in consensus to shuttle blood to the heart. All the veins, the valves, the shunts, they all force the oxygen and nutrient hungry blood out of our fingertips and toes to the destination where everything will be replenished. But the blood never stays in the heart for a moment longer than it needs to be filled with new oxygen, new nutrients, before it is pumped right back out, only return when it is thirsty yet again.

No one ever wonders if the heart feels used, by all this blood that enters his room only to leave when the morning creeps over the night. Perhaps because the heart was built for this purpose, and this purpose only. Or perhaps because this is the only purpose it has ever known. 

I feel sad for the heart.

I wonder if it gets lonely like I do, sitting alone in this bed where love was once made but now only burns with the embers of past mistakes that spread like a cancer. 

I think back to the days I first moved to New York, over four years ago, I was fresh and new and still carried around the scent of Mafalda’s apricot tarts around with me. I was lit with excitement for my entrance into Juilliard for musical composition. 

My dreams were finally within my grasp. 

But the longer I stayed in this city the more inadequate I felt. In Crema I was a prodigy. Sparks flew the moment my fingers touched the keys and my talent soared like Icarus somersaulting in the sky.

But, alas, I had forgotten that Icarus, wings made of feather and wax, had flown too close to the sun, and when his wings melted he was doomed to spend all of eternity with Poseiden under the sea. But instead of Poseidon I am surrounded by students younger than me, more talented than me, more special than I would ever be, a constant reminder that this city could swallow me whole and spit me out and all I would have to say is _thank you_.

But the one place I did feel special was between the sheets, with men who were too rough and too vulgar to give me anything but the self-affirmation I thirsted for. My features have always been delicate, effeminate, almost like a woman’s but not quite. Gay men were entranced by me. Straight men were confused by me. Closeted men looked at me like a blind man seeing the sun for the very first time. And I loved all of it. 

So I attempted to mitigate my fears of inadequacy by saying yes to nearly every man who stepped into my life. _Yes_ I’ll watch that movie with you. _Yes_ you can choose where we go to dinner tonight. And _Yes_ you can fuck my brains out after. 

I said yes so many times sometimes they stopped hearing me when I said _no_. And I think about that one time that one man pushed me down on the sink of his bathroom and had his way with me. And at first I said _yes yes yes_ but then I cried _no no no_ but he couldn’t stop what I had started. And then I think about the other time he approached me outside my apartment, with a group of friends who were hidden in the dark but still visible from the street lamps. How they held me down and all had their way with me. And how once again, none of them could stop what I had started. 

My thoughts are suddenly interrupted by the ringing of my phone.

“Hello?”

“Elio! Darling! How are you doing? Has that big city eaten you up yet?” 

Before I could respond, I heard the phone being shuffled over to my father, with a muffled Let me talk to him, let me talk to him!

“Ellie bellie, my master pianist son! Is New York treating you well? You have been there so long I hope you are not sad and depressed like the lot of them.” 

“It’s fine, but I do wish I was home.”

“Ah, Crema is so beautiful this time of year. Our apricot trees are doing better than ever. Mafalda made her wonderful apricot tart today, your favorite.Why don’t you come home, just for a week?”

“I have work, Papa, and school, and I think my manager may fire me if I slack on another shift.”

“Our hard-working boy… but that ridiculous coffee shop, for the life of me I don’t understand why you keep working there! Your mother and I are always happy to send you all the money you need, you have enough on your plate with your classes.”

“Papa, I need my own savings, I can’t rely on you and Mama forever. I promise I’ll come home this summer, I miss you very much.”

“Ahhh our son, always so responsible.” I could hear him smiling through the phone, eyes crinkling and head tilted back like he had never been happier in his life. 

To be honest, I didn’t take money from my parents because I was afraid, afraid of what they would say when they found out their “hard-working boy” liked to sleep in beds with men instead of women, of what they would think when I went back to Italy and suddenly I was no longer interested in Marzia but instead had eyes only for Matteo. 

What would they think, my poor Jewish parents, of their perfect boy then?

But I couldn’t tell them this. Not yet. 

“Listen, Elio, I know you have a strange obsession working at this coffee shop of yours but I really would love for you to consider this internship. One of my old philosophy students just moved to New York, he is working on his dissertation at the moment but he organizes this wonderful writing internship that I think you would love. You’ve always loved writing so much, Elio, and you are so skilled at it, I think this would be a great fit for you.”

This was true, I always did love writing. It was just like music in a way, but with words that spoke instead of notes that sang. Maybe this would be good for me. Maybe it would be nice to take off a few shifts from the coffee shop.

“That actually sounds wonderful, who is this student of yours?”

“I don’t believe you have met him before, I taught him for a short while in Paris but I could tell he was very promising. He is such a gifted writer, I think you can learn a lot from him. I’ll send over his email to you, his name is Oliver.”

Oliver. Philosophy. Dissertation. 

_Oliver._

Indeed, two glimpses, and all is damned.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hi Oliver,_

_I hope this email finds you well. This is Elio, Samuel Perlman’s son. My father told me you organize a writing internship at the New York Times, and I would be honored to be considered for it. I haven’t had much schooling in writing, as I am a musical composition major, but it has always been a passion of mine and I am so excited to explore it._

_I’ve attached my resume below as well as my academic transcript, please let me know if any other information is needed. I look forward to hearing from you._

_Best,  
Elio Perlman   
ep348@julliard.edu  
Julliard School of the Arts, Class of 2020_

_x.Academic transcript.pdf x.Resume.doc  
6:30 pm. Sent from my iPhone. _

_* * * * *_

_Hi Elio,  
It is wonderful to hear from you! Professor Perlman is a dear friend of mine and I am sure his son is just as brilliant as he is. _

_A bit about the internship: you will be working with other writers to compose a new section in the New York Times that was created to expose the public to the minds of new, young writers. The subject matter varies, but usually writers prefer to talk about personal opinions or experiences, whether it be in politics or social phenomena. All in all, it is creativity-based, it is more about spreading ideas and opinions rather than stone-cold information._

_The internship is yours, as long as you still want to take it. The schedule is Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5 to 10pm in the New York Times building uptown. I am so excited to read your work._

_PS. Any chance you work at the coffee shop on the corner of 41st and Lexington? Your name rings a bell and I think I’ve met an Elio working there before._

_Best,  
Oliver Wiseman  
ow156@gmail.com   
Columbia University Class of 2017_

_* * * * *_

_Hi Oliver,  
Wonderful, thank you so much for the opportunity. I’ll be there next Tuesday at 5._

_PS. Yes, I do work at that coffee shop, you should try our apricot tarts sometime. They are divine._

_Best,  
Elio Perlman   
ep348@julliard.edu  
Julliard School of the Arts, Class of 2020_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for all of the wonderful comments, they truly make my day.  
> I'm so glad you are all enjoying this story, it is quite slow in the beginning, but I'm trying to build up some tension and let you really see into Elio's mind. Things will get exciting soon! :)

I decided to reduce my shifts at the coffee shop to three a week instead of six, instead of quitting entirely for my new writing internship. My father was right, I did have an odd connection to the place, and part of me was afraid of not being present if Lea were to spiral. I felt a sense of comfort, because no matter what had happened the night before, I could always expect to see a shock of red hair and sparkling earlobes flanking the pastries under the glass every morning at 6am. Perhaps she needed my guidance just as much as I needed hers. 

I wasn’t sure I was making the right decision, putting myself in such close proximity with a man who I already knew would be my ruin. Half of myself told me to run in the other direction, take up more and more shifts at the shop and enroll in more and more classes at school until the only things occupying my mind were burnt coffee and musical transcripts.

But the other half was excited for the thrill, the danger, the curiosity of being so close but unable to reach out and touch. It was this half that ended up winning. It always did, and perhaps the lack of use was what was causing my other half to slowly disintegrate. 

I looked at my watch. _4pm._ In half an hour I would be off work and headed over to my first day at the internship, my first day seeing Oliver outside these four walls that comforted me with their smells of roasted coffee and fresh muffins. I wondered if he would wear the same billowy blue shirt that exposed his arms. Or perhaps the green one that accentuated his chest. Or perhaps an entirely different shirt that let me see yet another part of his body that would consume me.

“Elio!” 

I guess I had to wonder no longer because he stepped into the shop, wearing a blue short-sleeve that seemed to perfectly match his azure irises.

Damn him and his _fucking_ shirts. 

“I was hoping you would be here! You know this coffee shop is right next to the New York Times building, so it’s actually really convenient for you to be working here.”

“Ha, more like an excuse for my boss not to let me off early.”

He chuckled. “Well I’ll make sure to leave a big tip every time I’m here, to compensate for your troubles.”

As if on cue, he pulled out a green bill from his wallet and slipped it into the pocket of my smock. And for a moment, there were only two thin sheets of cloth separating his skin from mine. I willed them to evaporate. 

Lea emerged from the storage room, a new piercing glinting on her nostril. 

“Hi sir, another black coffee for you?” She eyed his hand suspiciously, it was a bit too close to my smock for her liking. 

“No, not today, I actually came by to see Elio. He’s participating in a writing internship I am organizing.”

“Oh? A writer and a pianist, how will the world be able to handle the prodigal Elio Perlman?” she nudged my arm playfully, smirking as sarcasm seeped into her voice. 

I chuckled internally. Lea and her tough fucking act.

“How indeed!” Oliver said, and then he laughed and I felt like the sun had finally seeped through the glass doors, spreading its yellow fingers across the dusty tables and over the skin of everyone in the shop. His laugh, nothing but white teeth and loud openness, was the only thing I wanted to hear and everything I wanted to be. It was a laugh that people paid attention to, not necessarily because of its genuinity, but because it told them _Come here, look at me, look at me and see how happy I can make you._

“So Elio tells me you have a wonderful peach tart here, I’ve been dying to try it.”

I smiled, picking out the biggest one from the top of the pile for him. 

“On the house.” 

“Elio, you can’t give out shit for free because the customer is pretty.” Lea rolled her eyes and bumped my arm playfully.

I blushed furiously, pretending to roll my eyes when I was actually just trying to glance over at Oliver, witness another wide-mouthed, open laugh of his. But then I saw he too, had reddened his cheeks, and this made my heart sing. For at least in this one way, in this one moment when blood rushed to the skins of our faces in this dusty old shop, with the muffins smiling at us on the counter, we were one and the same. 

But as soon as the color had bloomed on his cheeks, it was washed away with a white-toothed smile and a carefree, “I bet he uses this tactic on all the girls, doesn’t he?”

Lea scoffed. “Sure he does.”

I chuckled as I hung up my smock, and quickly turned around to give Lea a wink before I followed Oliver out the door.

But what I found on her face scared me. I couldn’t read her expression, her eyebrows were twisted into knots above her forehead and her eyes slanted downward, her long lashes leaving grey shadows under her eyes. I had always been able to read her as easily as a book, but now I was at a loss. I barely had a moment to register this before Oliver shuffled me out into the hot summer air. 

Walking out next to Oliver on the busy streets of the city was a sight to behold. Even in this crowded, street, filled to the brim with men in dark suits bustling with papers and briefcases, he shined. He smiled that dazzling smile of his at men who looked like they haven’t slept in years, and suddenly the dark circles under their eyes were replaced with bright fleshy bags, and their downturned lips turned the other way as they smiled, saying _Hey, Oliver!_

The happy smiles and enthusiastic greetings only intensified when we walked into the New York Times building. I felt exhausted trailing behind him, having to put on a smile for so many people along the way that the muscles in my cheeks ached. I wondered what it was like to be him, to have to smile and be happy every day even if he wasn’t.

How he managed to have small, meaningless talk will all these meaningless people was beyond me.  
Yet, I longed to embody him, to walk down these meaningless streets and hallways and have these meaningless people hanging on to my every word, to have them looking for a smile on my face that would be returned only if I initiated it. 

He stopped in front of a conference room, and inquisitive young faces peered up at me through the glass. 

Oliver turned to me, nearly knocking me back as I hadn’t realized how close to him I was standing. 

“All the other interns have been working here for a few months, but I am sure you will fit right in! Everyone is really friendly and welcoming, and if they’re not just let me know and I’ll take care of it.” He winked and mimed a swift punch in the air, and as his arm upturned I caught a glimpse of his white underarms, white and smooth and starkly contrasting the rest of his golden skin. Just as I had remembered them. They made me shiver.

I laughed, hoping he did not notice my stare. “I think I’ll be able to handle it.” 

He turned and smiled at the other interns, introducing me, and was met with enthusiastic waves and greetings from the faces in the room.

 _Smile at me, Oliver_ , I wanted to say. 

_Smile at me and see how meaningful I can be to you._


	5. Chapter 5

Months passed.

The sweltering summer air soon turned into crisp fall, and the green leaves bloomed yellow, orange, and red, before decaying into brown and falling into the cold streets below. Barely a moment passed before fall turned into winter, and the buildings that once provided shade from the glaring sun now blocked any light coming into the city, covering it with darkness. The streets grew colder. The air grew harsher. The city lights dimmed. 

They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but it seems to be sleeping now. Deep in a winter slumber, belly filled with work and school and frigidity, only to be awakened when spring glazes her pink fingertips over the sky. 

But I didn’t need spring. I was already awake. Perhaps I had never fallen asleep. 

In the months since I started working at the New York Times, Oliver and I had taken to meeting weekly to discuss my work. At first it had been a polite affair, just to ask me about how my father was and how I was doing in school. But then one day we drank some fancy wine he had gotten at the liquor store a few blocks down and we embarked on a drunken conversation about Sylvia Plath and whether her poetry was a metaphor for life. We agreed that it was. And then this turned into a screaming debate on whether or not Bukowski was _actually_ crazy or if he was more sane than anyone else on this planet. I was insistent on the latter, and Oliver was stuck on the former, but when the glasses were emptied and our lungs were exhausted of air, we sat back on the couch in his office and agreed to disagree. But a few moments later he whispered _perhaps you are right_ and the next day I found a hardcover copy of Bukowski’s novel on my desk. 

Inside the cover, he had written in red ink: _It takes a brave soul to debate with a philosopher. But it takes a wise one to win._

It was in these moments, sitting next to Oliver under the bright fluorescent lights of his office, nothing but an odd pillow or a small desk separating us, that I first began to feel alive. 

Alive because his skin, golden tan and white smoothness all rolled into one, was so close to me I could feel the sparks of electricity jumping between us. 

Alive because I often caught his eyes lingering on mine for a second longer than they should have. 

Alive because, perhaps for the very first time, someone was listening to what I had to say. Someone actually wanted to hear what I had to say. And I think perhaps this is what I had wanted all along. 

But with life came the ache. I am feeling it now as I look at the picture on his desk, a sparkling blue sea behind him and blondie from the first day I met him at the coffee shop, a diamond ring sparkling on her finger laid across his chest. 

“Elio,”

His voice brings me back to reality.

“I wanted to talk about your piece from last week.”

He pulled out a printed copy of my poem. I had written it on a lonely night after too many drinks and too much heartache. 

_“Running, running, running._

_Running from his rough hands,_

_From which rough touches flow,_

_Running, running, running,_

_From the purple and blue that bloom at my throat,_

_From the blood to my lungs which ceases to flow,_

_Running, running, running,_

_Can’t breath, I say,_

_I am running too fast and I can’t breath.”_

“I love this piece Elio, and it has been getting a lot of positive feedback from our readers. I think it is really important to write about things that are difficult for us, especially given that cases of sexual assault are so rampant right now. But as your friend, I must ask you, are you doing okay? I am concerned for you, and if you need help I am always here to chat and I can connect you to a therapist or…”

“I’m okay, it was more of a metaphor for life, not real sexual assault. Sometimes life can fuck you over in the same way, I guess.”

The lie flowed from my lips like water. It was all too easy.

Oliver breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, okay, that makes me feel much better. I am so happy about your piece Elio, you are writing so well. But I just wanted you to know I care about you, and I hope you are feeling well yourself.”

 _Oh Oliver_ , I wanted to say, _now that I know you care, I am doing just wonderful. Better than you could ever know._

But now was not the time to speak this truth. 

“Thank you, I’m glad you get a rise out of my incessant ramblings.”

“I like the way you write things, Elio. I don’t understand why you are always putting yourself down.”

“So you won’t, I guess.”

“Do you really care that much about what I think?”

 _Ha._ Do I care, Oliver? _It is more than care,_ my dear Oliver. _I worship the ground you walk on and your words are the blood that rushes through my veins. Of course I care._

I’m thinking these thoughts in my head, and suddenly I think I have said them aloud because Oliver is looking at me with a shocked expression, his startling blue eyes wide are glinting under the fluorescent lamp in the office. For a moment my heart beats so fast I think I might pass out, and the world is spinning spinning spinning out of control, and I want nothing more than to eat up the words I’ve just said, eat them up and swallow them down so they can never see the light of day again. 

But the shocked expression on his face wilted away as soon as it had come, and he laughed.

“Elio, you are like an 80 year old man trapped in a 20 year old body. You have all the knowledge in the world, but yet you say things as if you are clueless.”

“I know nothing, Oliver.” 

Perhaps it was the wine settling in my stomach. Perhaps it was the ache I felt as I looked at the photo of him and his fiance. But whatever it was, it told me that this was it. This was my one and only chance to break down these barriers between us. Lay myself bare and naked in front of him and see what he will do.

“Well you seem to know more than anyone else I know.”

“If you only knew how little I know about the things that matter.” 

I looked at him, trying to gauge his expression. It was unreadable. 

“What things that matter?” he asked, his eyebrows tied into knots above his forehead.

“You know what things.”

I nudged closer to him, throwing the cushy pillow between us behind the couch and wedging my leg between his. I twisted my thigh so it made contact with the inner part of his leg closest to his crotch, where I knew the skin was most sensitive, just to tell him _yes, Oliver, I want you. I’ve always wanted you and now you know._

The instant our thighs made contact I felt a jolt of electricity rush into my veins. His skin was the conductor, and I was the lowly battery who had the fortune of coming too close with the electricity that gave him life.

I smiled at his exasperated expression, innocent. 

The seconds ticked by, yet his face continued to be unreadable. The seconds felt like minutes, and the minutes felt like hours, and the hours were but a moment. 

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

I didn’t respond. I just continued looking at him. I knew my gaze held his answer. 

He sighed, running a hand through his hair and looking at his toes. 

His eyes shifted up to his leg, my leg.

“You’re making things very difficult for me.” 

I laughed at the irony.

_Oh, Oliver. If only you knew._


	6. Chapter 6

_You are making things very difficult for me._

His words hung in my mind like a Frida Kalho painting in the center of the room. You weren’t sure what you were looking at, and you were even less sure about what it meant. But the vibrant colors and shapes it held forced you to look at it, turning your head as far as it will go to catch a glimpse of this painting that seemed to spell out everything meaningful in the world, and everything not, all at once. 

I had laughed when he uttered these words, because Oliver simply had no idea how difficult he was making things for _me._ As we grew closer, bonding over our mutual love of poetry and debate, everything else in my life seemed to grow farther and farther away.

At work, as my mind was consumed with the feeling of your leg on mine, the feeling of tracing my finger along the smooth whiteness of your underarms, and I became a statue to Lea. Your presence had taken residence in a deep part of my being, turning it into stone, and suddenly this part became rough and rigid marble that was unable to take in another resident. And unfortunately, she was evicted. In the mornings as I put coffee grounds into the machine, she would carry out trays and trays of pastries, carefully arranging them under the glass. I babbled about you, about the internship, how you gifted me a Bukowski novel that I was never going to let out of my sight. And at first, she seemed happy for me, though she warned me not to get too close. 

But she always had that same look on her face, eyebrows raised and eyes slanted downward. I couldn’t read her anymore. 

And the day after my confession, I confided in her about the sparks that flew the moment I touched my leg to yours. And in a moment her unreadable expression bursted red.

“He’s fucking engaged. What do you think is going to happen?” She had spat, strands of red hair falling into her eyes as she turned to make sure her piercing words hit me directly. 

I stopped confiding in her after that. She was right, but I didn’t want to admit it yet. And as the days grew colder, she did as well. Now in the mornings, as I put coffee grounds into the machine, and she carries out trays and trays of pastries, carefully arranging them under the glass, a hefty silence weighs in the air between us. 

In the silence hangs words unsaid, but what hangs heavier are words that don’t want to be heard. 

She dyed her hair blue. But sometimes, when the dim lights in the ceiling of the shop hit at just the right angle, I could still see a few strands of red peeking through. But they weren’t really red anymore, the blue dye covered it just enough to leave a faint hint of magenta. But I saw only red because I missed her red hair. It was too cold to wear sandals now, so she wore sneakers everyday, and I wondered if she still wore that toe ring under her socks. Maybe she had taken it off, she had complained a few months ago that the cheap metal was discoloring her skin to be yellow and blue. 

And you, Oliver, had distanced yourself from me too. In the days after I laid myself bare, you became disgusted by my naked body. You stopped coming to the coffee shop in the mornings. My manager wondered why we suddenly had a surplus of apricot tarts everyday. When I peered over at you from above my laptop screen at work, you didn’t meet my gaze with a smile as you had before. Your blue eyes were no longer warm, they were ice-cold and piercing now. You looked at me as if you never wanted my eyes to meet yours ever again, as if you wished they had never met in the first place on that hot summer day above pastries and black coffee.You would close your computer with a quick _click_ and shuffle away into your office, locking the door. This continued on for a week until I couldn’t take it anymore, and I found myself knocking on your door on Friday hoping you would still be there for one of our weekly discussions. I had turned the brass knob, hoping it would give, but it was locked. And when I pressed my ear to the hard surface of your door I could hear nothing but silence.

And in this silence too, I feel the weight of the words left unsaid. But in my throat, the words that you didn’t want to hear hang heavier. 

And even though you still came out in the evenings, saying hello to all the interns and smiling as if nothing had happened, I knew everything had changed.

_“Sit and read me a story, dear mother,  
A story about love and desire from ages past,  
About a knight who fell in love with a princess,  
But could not find the words to say,  
And so he wondered if it was better to speak or to die,  
But in the end he decided it was better to die after all._

_Sit and read me a story, dear mother,  
About a king of the underworld who fell in love with a goddess,  
And tried to tell her his love,  
By bringing her into the underworld with him,  
Only to see the light of her eyes disappear,  
As his followed. _

_Sit and read me a story, dear mother,  
About a boy named Icarus who flew to the sun,  
With wings made of feathers and wax,  
And eyes full of dreams,  
Which caused him to fall down down down,   
Into watery depths where he could dream no longer._

_Sit and read me a story, dear mother,  
And run your hands through my hair,  
Tell me all the good parts,  
About love and joy and happiness,  
But I implore to you, my dear mother,  
Do not read the ending.”_

I read my poem for the week aloud to myself. Printed it out and folded it into a neat white square. On the back I scribbled in red pen: _Can’t stand the silence. Need to speak to you._

Slipped it under your door before I slipped slipped slipped away.


	7. Chapter 7

_Elio,_

_Your poem for the week is great, I’m looking forward to seeing how our readers will respond to it._

_I’m inviting all the interns out to dinner tomorrow night, at La Carbonara in midtown. Made a reservation for 8, hope to see you there._

_PS. The fact you slipped that note under my door instead of just emailing me just confirms to me that you are indeed, an 80 year old man. Don’t doubt yourself._

_Best,  
Oliver Wiseman  
ow156@gmail.com   
Columbia University Class of 2017_

_* * * * * * *_

_Oliver,_

_Thanks, I’ll be there. See you tomorrow._

_PS. Old doesn’t mean wise._

_Best,  
Elio Perlman   
ep348@julliard.edu  
Julliard School of the Arts, Class of 2020 ___

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, please leave a comment :)  
> thank you for all the support, it means so much to me <3


	8. Chapter 8

La Carbona used to be my favorite restaurant in the city. They served authentic Italian fare that reminded me of the dishes Mafalda used to make back home, although after dinner I wasn’t kissed on the cheek with a soft _piccino_ by my mother and wasn’t rubbed reassuringly on the shoulder by my father. 

I missed the feeling of being reassured, of being comfortable where I was, surrounded by people who loved me to the ends of the earth. 

But now, sitting with all the other interns in a long table with Oliver and his fiance at the head, this restaurant is forever ruined for me.

“Hi everyone! This is my fiance, Marisol, she wanted to meet all these brilliant young minds I am holed up with every day. Thank you all for coming, this dinner is just a way for me to thank you for all the hard work you have put in so far.” He had said, hand curled around the blonde woman’s waist.

Right now he is eating some bullshit American alfredo as if he hasn’t eaten in years, and the cream sauce dripped on his shirt. 

“Let me get that for you,” his fiance chuckled, and wiped away the spot with her napkin.

Oliver smirked and laughed, saying, “Happens to the best of us!”

Oh how carefree he must be, how wonderful he must feel, to treat his vices as if they were a mere nuisance that could be wiped away with the swipe of a napkin, or the deflection of a gaze. As if they were small spots on his shirt that only sat on the surface instead of seeping into the cloth. How easy his life must be, having this blonde haired, blue eyed woman at his side, ready to wipe away any spots with a smile and a napkin in her fingers. 

The ache that was bubbling inside me was quickly turning into anger, but I couldn’t help it. I stared at my green dish of pesto and willed myself to evaporate from this table, away from Oliver and his alfredo-sauce wiping fiance, away from all this nonsense of him pretending everything is easily fixed when it’s not. 

_Look at me_ , I wanted to say, _look at me and remember._

I wanted him to remember. Remember how it felt when I touched my leg to his and how he felt when he said I was making things difficult for him. Remember our weekly conversations about meaningless words put together to make music. I wanted him to stop pretending as if that moment in his office meant nothing to him.

Am I reading too much into your words, Oliver? 

Were you disgusted by my confession? Is that why you cannot look me in the eye anymore? Is that why we must speak only in metaphors and in the PSs of emails so you can avoid hearing the words that are scratching and crawling for freedom in my throat? When you said I was making things difficult for you, did you simply mean you were annoyed by this skinny little boy who wouldn’t leave you alone? 

Or did you mean that I had awoken some kind of desire in you that had laid dormant, as you courted and fell in love with this blonde woman who could never see you the way I see you? That the reason we can only speak in metaphors and in the PSs of emails is because you are afraid of my body, and what I represent in your life?

Please tell me it is the latter Oliver. Because if it is not I may unravel completely. 

“Handsome couple, aren’t they?”

I turned to Robert, another intern I sat next to sometimes during my shift. He seemed nice enough, but his endless small talk often bordered on annoyance. 

“Yeah, American dream, I guess.” I chuckled, looking down again at my plate. 

When I didn’t elaborate, he quickly attempted to change the subject to dispel the awkward silence that fell between us.

“I really liked your piece this week, by the way. Have you gone to writing workshops before?”

“No.”

“Oh, well you’re a really good writer.”

Awkward silence again. I almost felt bad for him, but I couldn't bring myself to have this meaningless conversation while anger and betrayal bubbled at my throat. 

“M’sorry, I’ve had a few drinks and I just feel like I have to say it. You are always so quiet and you always look like you are on the edge of crying or something. You never talk with the rest of us. If you are depressed you should go see a counselor or something, it’s really sad seeing you always so quiet and upset about god knows what.” 

I looked up sharply. 

“I don’t need to be saved, Robert. I can save myself. You have other things to do other than worry about me, when we both know that you don’t really care.”

I tried to keep my words civil, to filter out the profanities that were fated to erupt. With Lea distant and Oliver pretending I never existed, the last thing I needed was another intern hating me. I half expected him to pick up his plate and leave, sit next to another intern who would be happy to speak about nonsensical things. But his response surprised me. 

“What the fuck does a pretty boy like you have to be so worried about?”

He smirked, grabbing my thigh under the table. 

“Why don’t we go out for drinks sometime and I can show you how you can be saved.”

His hands travelled to the inner corners of my thigh, rough and hard, and the alcohol in his breath snaked into my nostrils. 

Almost by instinct, I kicked his shin under the table.

“What the fuck!” he hissed, and grabbed my arm so roughly I was sure it would leave a mark the next morning. 

I suddenly felt a tall, looming presence behind me, and a soft hand on my shoulder. It rubbed me reassuringly, and for a moment I wondered if my father had come to surprise me in New York.

But of course, no such luck.

“Is there a problem here? Elio are you okay?” Oliver squeezed my shoulder. 

And in that moment I hated him. Really, truly hated him. He couldn’t just decide when it was convenient for him to make sure I was okay, when he spent the last three weeks ignoring me even though he knew I wasn’t. It was so like him, only to step in when a spectacle was made, just to save his own face and his own ass from this embarrassing intern who seemed to always get into some kind of trouble. 

Not all of us have a pretty fiance to wipe away our mistakes, Oliver. Some of us have stains that run deep.

“I don’t need you to fucking save me!” I spat, and suddenly everyone froze, forks and wine glasses halfway to their lips, statues of marble motionless in the silence that fell over the table.

And Oliver was staring at me too. Mouth open. Eyes wide. It was the first time he really looked at me in weeks and a part of my heart fluttered. 

But the other part rushed blood into my cheeks and into my brain and suddenly the silence turned into a whining ringing in my ears. I hastily stood from the table, the chair screeching embarrassingly loudly behind me, and rushed out the door.

The bells behind me went _clink clink clink_ and the burning tears from my eyes went _drip drip drip._


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Sorry for the long wait :)  
> This chapter is a heavy one (*trigger warning for sexual assault*),   
> but as always, things must be dark before dawn arrives. 
> 
> as always, leave a comment, and I love you all for reading :)

Where am I?

What is happening?

Running from the Italian restaurant...Oliver looking at me...everyone looking at me…

Running to a club in midtown...music is too loud...floor is too crowded...but I just need a distraction...any distraction...  
Music is too loud. Floor is too cold. Smells like cigarettes but it's not the brand I like. Head hurts. Ears ringing. Hair getting caught on something but I can’t turn my head to see what it is.

Sticky, wet. So much sweat, everywhere, is it mine? 

Can’t feel...my body...can’t control… my limbs...why?

My face is burning hot but the rest of my body is ice cold. Why is it so cold in here? Where are all the people dancing? Where is all this sweat coming from?

Where am I?

Shapes...colors...I can’t see anything…

_“What a beautiful boy…”_

Deep voice but I don’t recognize it. 

Who is it?

Can’t speak. Throat is too tight. Throat is closing. Getting hard to breathe. 

_“Had to talk to you...just had to…”_

Deep voice grunted again. 

And suddenly I feel a sharp pain deep inside me, a piercing pain that seems to burn straight through my stomach into a crisp, and my mind is brought back into clarity.

After running from La Carbonara, away from Oliver’s icy gaze, I had walked into Pyramid, a gay club in midtown. 

There was a man, older, tall and bulky. Offered to buy me a drink. I said yes. 

I didn’t see him slip the small, white pill into my rum and coke, but I know that he did.

I didn’t feel him pushing me into a bathroom stall, but I know that he did.

I didn’t watch him pull down his jeans and push me onto the toilet, but I know that he did.

I knew what was going to happen before any of it did. 

_“Stop…”_ I whispered feebly, trying to push my hand against his chest, but my brain was utterly disconnected from my limbs and my weak attempt was almost comical. 

Cold floor. Wet toilet seat. Burning hot hands. 

Sweat everywhere. Not mine. 

A sequence of events that were all too familiar. 

He couldn’t stop...what I had started...

A loud bang. A _“Get fucking lost!”_

This was new. What was happening?

Hot sweaty hands disappeared as quickly as they had come. Replaced by hands that weren’t hot, nor cold, hands that held me up instead of pushing me down. 

Warm arms circled around me, one hand smoothed down my hair that had been caught on the clasp of my necklace. The smell of cologne and suntan lotion. Hot, fat tears falling on my face. 

Were they mine?

“Elio, it’s me.”

Oliver?

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, you’re okay. I’ve got you.”

My heart beat impossibly faster. 

_Can you feel it, Oliver? Can you feel how it beats this way only for you?_

And as I relaxed into his arms, sitting on the cold floor of the bathroom stall that smells of old cigarettes and vodka, next to a toilet sheer with sweat and cut with the blade of despair, I thought perhaps I should break down my defenses, and stop acting like I don’t need to be saved. Oliver has me. _He has me, he has me, he has me._

Perhaps I should lay back into this warmth, and just let him save me.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for reading <3  
> a happy chapter, finally :) thank you all for sticking with me!

I awoke in a bed that was not my own. In the darkness my head still spun, and the pressure behind my eyelids beat against my skull, but the scent of sea salt and suntan lotion brought sweetness into my throat. I was laid at the edge of a bed, facing toward the wall and looking down into a trash can methodically placed under my mouth, where a string of sparkling saliva still connected me to the ground. The wall in front of me was still shrouded in darkness, but as the hours passed and morning creeped its fingers through the window, beams of yellow shot across the white surface, like yolk splattered eggshells from the soft-boiled eggs Mafalda used to make back home.

I am not sure how long I was awake, staring, but nearly the entire room was covered in yellow sunlight when I felt the mattress dip beside me. A soft hand reached for the strands of hair that had fallen in my face, brushing away the sticky curls slick with sweat. I watched our shadows, grey and beautiful, against the yolky yellow wall, illuminated by the rays of light streaming from the window. 

You are propped on your elbow. Even from your shadow I can make out the perfect straightness of your Grecian nose. My eyes catch the slight furrow of your brow as you lean down, watching my sleeping figure unaware that I am staring at yours just the same through my eyelashes and the shadows on the wall.

_Don’t move a muscle. Don’t take a breath. Don’t do anything that would change this moment, make him disappear from beside me like this was nothing but a dream._

I feel your warm fingertips on my lips, leaving sparks of electricity in their wake as they grazed over my skin. I would have died a thousand times to be able to see the expression on his face, and I would have died a thousand more to be able to turn to you with confidence that you would stay there. But I contented myself with staring only at our shadows, willing them to transcend into the figures they encapsulated, until the beating in my skull drowned out my vision, and sleep overtook me.

And I wondered if what I had seen was all a dream, for when I woke a few hours later the bed was empty next to me, and all I had left was the smell of sea-salt and suntan lotion and the memories of our swiftly moving shadows. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I hope you don’t mind, Oliver, but when I got up in the morning I ran my hands over your books. I sat on your couch. I traced my thumb over the edges of mugs where I know your lips have rested. 

_Oliver books. Oliver couch. Oliver mugs._

I tried to take out your trash for you, but I couldn’t figure out where your garbage chute was in your monster of an apartment building so I left the bag tied up in a knot in front of your door. I hope you don’t mind. 

Your apartment is nice, quite spacious and organized, everything has its place. But I find it strange, Oliver, that there are no lasting remnants of your fiance here. I found a tube of pink lipstick in the bathroom and a polaroid of her propped up on the mantle above the fireplace, but these are all transitory items, as if she was floating through this place only to leave when morning creeps over the night. Does she lack a permanent hold on you?

This thought glimmered hope in my chest. 

I went to my shift at the coffee shop as usual. I loaded the machine with coffee grinds as usual. I swept the floors and wiped the countertops as usual. I avoided Lea and fell silent when she came out of the supply closet as usual.

But all the while the back pocket of my jeans glowed red hot. My fingers constantly found themselves there attempting to quell the heat that emanated from the cloth.

On the kitchen counter, next to a mug filled to the brim with piping hot black coffee, there was a note. I ran my fingers over the yellow paper where I knew your hands had rested. 

_Elio,  
Please come back to my place after your shift at the coffee shop today.   
We need to talk.   
Oliver_

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
“Hi.”

“I’m glad you came.”

He stood in his doorway, dressed in grey sweatpants and a frayed Columbia t-shirt. His large frame made the strands at the top of his head nearly graze the top of the doorframe. 

“Come in, Elio.”

I lowered myself slowly on the grey couch I had sat on this morning, with my eyes closed and images of Oliver dancing around my mind. This is where he sat every night reading Heraclitus after he finished work. This is where he sat every morning sipping black coffee and reading the New York Times. 

“I’m nervous.”

He took my hand, rubbed small circles around my knuckle with his thumb. He spoke no words, but my anxiety was instantly quelled. 

“I followed you, after you left the restaurant. Just to make sure you were okay. I followed you to that club and I saw you with that man and I thought maybe I was a fool. You were just having fun. You were fine. So I went outside for a smoke, waited for you to come outside so I could make my apologies.”

“I thought you didn’t smoke?”

“I don’t.” he gave a crooked smile and a sly chuckle.

“I was out there for a few hours, and you hadn’t come out. So I went back inside and I couldn’t find you. So I went to the bathroom and I heard some commotion...and I heard your voice…”

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes and tilting his head towards the ceiling, as if gravity itself could quash down his tears. 

“And what I saw...Elio I had never hated another human being more in my life.” 

“Thank you. For everything. I’m sorry.” I looked down, suddenly red and embarrassed because it had just occurred to me that Oliver had seen me pushed up against another man, not in control of my limbs, Oliver had seen me vomit and vomit until there was nothing left but the blade of despair. 

“I didn’t lie when I said that I cared about you, Elio. But I lied to myself at the extent of it. When I saw you in that bathroom I was forced to come headfirst with the realization that I care about you as more than a friend. As more than a colleague. I just...”

He ran a hand through his hair, and sighed. 

“I’m sorry. I think sometimes I use up so many of my words in casual greetings and meaningless conversations that I don’t have any left for when it really matters. I’m so used to swallowing down my emotions and covering them up with smiles and carefree laughter, I think I’ve forgotten how to let them show. In a way, I’m jealous of you for that. You are always so open, I can read your face like a book. You are never hiding.”

“The only difference between you and I is that you are better at hiding than I am. Perhaps it is a blessing, not a curse.”

He chuckled. “ A blessing indeed. Marisol would have shouted off my ear if she knew.”

“Have you told her?”

“She and I, we have never had the best relationship. We got engaged because of our families. We love each other, I guess, in our own way, but it’s not enough for me. She is not enough for me. And I think she realized as soon as you ran out that door and I followed you.”

Tears pulsed behind my eyelids, and I wasn’t sure whether they were from joy that he cared, really truly cared, or that he has been stuck so long living a meaningless life with meaningless people unable to show the world who he really was. I placed a hand on his arm, and he responded by placing both hands around my face, cradling me gently as if I would disappear in a moment.

He leaned in closer and closer until I could nearly taste him, but then suddenly he stopped and asked,

“Can I kiss you?”

A ridiculous question that I refused to entertain with an answer. 

I crashed my lips to his and suddenly it was as if the yellow beams of sunlight that shot over his wall this morning were shooting into my brain, coloring everything along their path into a sparkling yellow.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You touch me as if I am glass, easily breakable, but perhaps copper would be a better analogy because your hands leave electricity on my skin everywhere they roam. And suddenly I am crying, because the way you look at me, the way you see me, has made me feel worthy for the first time in my life. And the feeling is so overwhelming because I have been searching for it ever since I stepped foot into this city and came to embody Icarus, flying and somersaulting under the sun only to have his wings melted into the sea. Ever since my skin was first touched with the dirty sweat and dark desire of the men of the ocean who promised me the world but gave me only mistakes. Ever since I let those boys pretending to be men masquerade into my life and whisk away any remaining desire I had to fly again. Ever since I built up that first wall of my heart, stifling the voices that screamed inside, melting the wax of their wings so they could not soar in the sky because I was afraid they too, would drown. 

Here, on this bed, with my back arching off the mattress, I feel beautiful and alive in my callow bones.

And in this moment I feel an overwhelming need to be closer to you than I already am, fold my skin into small tiny pieces and stuff them into the crook of your arm, the crevice behind your knee, cut them up and sprinkle them into the silky strands of your hair. My heart beat against the walls of my chest, screaming at me to move impossibly closer until all I could smell was the musky iron of your sweat and all I could taste was sea salt and sun tan lotion. 

_Become one with him,_ it told me, _become the person who you always dreamed you would be but never had the courage to._

_Build your walls around me, Oliver, until the outside world is shut out and reduced into a meaningless blur outside of us._

And with these desires in my mind, I said,

“Call me by your name and I’ll call you by mine.”

And as soon as you whispered “Oliver” into my ear and I whispered “Elio” into yours, golden light bloomed inside my chest so violently and suddenly I forgot how to breathe. The walls I had surrounded my heart with evaporated into thin air as they fused with yours, and in a moment they both dissolved into the scent of fresh silk and primrose. 

And in bed that night, when I became you and you became me, the whispering voices locked inside sang into the sky.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the wonderful support, your comments make me so happy <3
> 
> I would love to hear what you guys think of the book sequel "Find Me", I personally found it to be a bit unsatisfying, but of course, that is only my humble opinion. But it is mainly why I decided to write this fic in the first place. If you would like, please leave a comment telling me what you thought of it, if you have read it :)

Insomnia  
_By Elio Perlman  
Submitted to the New York Times May 27, 2020_

_They say I am the city that never sleeps,  
Yet  
I feel I must sleep now, belly filled  
with blue blooming Winter,  
only to be awakened _

_when Spring  
glazes her pink fingertips  
over my skin.  
But he doesn’t need Spring,  
he is already  
Awake._

_Perhaps he had never slept,  
for betrayal, an odd emotion,  
masked by altruism,  
and kissed by Satan,  
slices the mind,  
Open._

_Come morning,  
I reach through his window,  
And I paint beams of yellow sun on his white walls,  
like yolk splattered egg shells  
Illuminating  
his swiftly moving shadows._

_Come Night,  
I swing above and cut depths of sapphire,  
into constellations of lavender,  
and I hang stars in the cracks,  
like golden spheres lining an earlobe,  
Shining  
just close enough for him to see._

_There is wonder in the hues,  
and there is magic in the woods,  
if he only thought to look,  
yet he is  
Distracted, _

_by the ghosts of his past  
that he pushes down into his belly.  
But doing so only makes them angry,  
so he knows tonight  
will be a restless one._

_And if he were to sleep,  
and if even Spring could not wake him,  
I would do nothing, for I am only  
a City,  
and I am running out of colors  
with which to paint. _

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

“Uh, Papa?”

I sat on the edge of my bed, watching as the sun set over the skyscrapers, slowly descending on a course it has known its whole life. 

If only I could know mine as well.

“Elio! So wonderful to hear from you. I just read your piece in the news today, absolutely stunning. I could not be more proud of you.”

“Papa, there is something I need to tell you.” I stopped to twiddle my thumbs.

“I’m gay. I’ve known for a while now. I can’t deny it anymore and I hate keeping secrets from you and Mama. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry if you can’t handle this and I understand if you do not see me as your son anymore.”

The words rushed out of me like a bubbling river, words that had long been blocked in my head by a dam that had finally broken.

There was a long pause. Tears pierced like needles at my eyes and my heart seemed to beat so fast it was standing still. I heard a chuckle over the receiver and wondered if he was being cruel. 

“My son, how could you ever think such a thing? You will always be our son. Always.”

I let out a breath.

“And anyway, we know.”

“You _know_?”

“Yes. We know.” he said, as if I couldn’t hear him the first time but he knew fully well that I could. 

“How?”

“Well, I know you have been working with Oliver recently. We have kept up a correspondence over the years. He speaks about you...as if you are the sun. Just complete adoration.” 

There was a long pause.

“Have I spoken out of turn?”

I shook my head, as if he could see through the phone, but perhaps he must have because he continued, 

“You had a beautiful friendship, at first. And as I continued to speak with him every week I watched it blossom into something so much more. Oliver has always been a very private man. He may seem overconfident and brash at times, but he is shy. He keeps most things to himself. But in these last few weeks, Elio, I have seen him bloom. He speaks about you and suddenly it is as if everything he has been taught to do, every way he has been taught to behave, has opened for him, and he speaks as if he cannot get the words out of his mouth fast enough.”

“Why are you telling me this only now?”

“When their child is going through something like this, most parents look away and simply hope they will fall and land on their feet. But I am not such a parent. You needed to feel these emotions yourself, experience them to their full extent, without hope and without agency. And if you were to fall I could be there to catch you. Yet if you were to rise you would live knowing that was your own doing, no one else’s. Discovering who you are, and whom you love, is an experience every person must have. And I did not want to deny you of that.”

My father had a way of speaking to which replies were silent, his words acknowledged with a gentle nod or a wayward glance. Over the phone, the unsaid words in silence spoke volumes. 

“You are lucky. And he is luckier. You are two good people who have found each other. Do not let societal constructs tell you otherwise.”

“Thank you”, I choked out, my throat suddenly thick with emotion. 

“I know you are coming home in a few weeks, after your classes are finished. If he would like, I would love to have Oliver here with us. Show him around Crema, it is so beautiful this time of year. I think it would be a wonderful experience for both of you, and of course your mother is dying to meet him.”

And until my father spoke these words into existence I had never realized just how much I wished them to be true. To have Oliver be in Crema, in the old villa where I grew up. For him to see that even though the skyscrapers and emptiness of New York City swallowed me whole, when I was under the beaming sun and next to the flowering fruit trees in Crema, I too, would bloom. What a wonder it would be, to bloom next to Oliver in Italy, where perhaps for once, we would shine just the same.

Please come. 

_Oh Oliver, please come. Please please please come and see my father. Meet my mother. Eat the apricot tarts that Mafalda makes that the ones in the coffee shop could never compare to. Sit by the sparkling fountain with me while we watch the apricot trees flow in the summer breeze. Smell the air laced with fresh silk and primrose, as if some higher being laced the oxygen just for you. I will let you sleep in my room, where the sun shines through the French windows in the morning and warms your sleeping body until it is awake. I will take you to Monet’s Berm, somewhere I have never taken anyone before, and we will lay in the long grass and watch the yellow fingers of the sunset creep behind the hills in the distance until they disappear and all that is left is the electricity that runs between us. At night I will play my piano for you, and within the notes you will hear all the words I have been unable to say. Please come with me, and let us fall in love away from this meaningless city with its meaningless streets filled with meaningless people._

_Please come with me, and be my love._


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO EVERYONE I am so sorry for the delay, I know it has been a long time but the past few months have been so crazy for me, I didn't have the mental capacity to write :( I hope you are all still here and enjoying this!
> 
> thank you everyone for reading and sticking with me <3

They say writing is like cutting a vein.

At first, it’s hard. You are afraid of the pain, of seeing the red liquid gush out of the skin that has always held you together. But as soon as the first cut is made, you feel the pressure that has been building up inside of you for so long you have forgotten what it feels like to live without it, and suddenly you are free with a lightness that slicks your palms with sweat. But the blood, the elixir of life, rushes out and out uncontrollably, and you simply can’t stop what you have already started. By the time there is regret it is already too late.

This is how I feel now, sitting in Oliver’s office, asking him to (please) come to Crema with me before the summer ends, before whatever it is we have will be buried by school and work and the dullness of life that sands over anything that shines. Before he realizes he is still engaged and the two of us will fall into whatever crevice of his mind he keeps open for people that have no place in his life. 

_I’ve been here before and I’ll be here again,_ I think, as I am sitting in his office, pouring out these words but unable to look him in the eye, and instead diverting my gaze to the picture of him and Marisol propped on his desk. Perhaps I’ll simply always be here, desperately wanting something from Oliver that he is unable to give. 

“It is beautiful this time of year. My father would love to see you again.” _(Please come be with me.)_

“We have a pool behind the house, you can grade papers there under the sun.” _(Please come be with me.)_

“My mother grows apricot and peach trees in the backyard, we have fresh juice every morning.” _(Please come be with me.)_

“There is a spare bedroom just across from mine, you will have plenty of room.” _(Won’t you please just come, and be with me?)_

For a brief moment, I thought he would say yes but then he said I can’t and I died a little bit inside. 

“I’m sorry. But you know why.”

His icy blue gaze was back. The gaze that finds you when you ask for too much of what he is unwilling to give. 

“Perhaps I do. But it doesn’t hurt any less.” I said plainly, without hope or agency. It felt futile to hide from him any longer, when I’ve already exposed all the aspects of myself I had always preferred to keep hidden. 

“Can you ever forgive me?” he asked.

“There is nothing to forgive. I remember nothing but good things. But I cannot bear to see you and remember what was lost. So when I come back to the city, if you come into the shop for your black coffee, I will call you sir because you are just another customer. If we cross paths on the street I will look ahead because I have never met you before. And if at night, the image of you comes into my mind, I will swallow it down and bury it so deep inside me it will never see the light of day.”

I couldn’t bear to see the look on his face because I knew one glimpse would unwind me completely, and I would crawl at his feet begging to swallow the words I just uttered. So I looked down at my feet and stood up from the couch. Through the front door, with its silver plaque that read _Oliver Wiseman, PhD_ , I walked out of his office and out of his floor and out of his building, and the walls of my heart built up and up and up.

A sad ending for a love that was born to die. 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

“Elio, you can’t just hide in here, there are customers waiting for you to take their order.” 

Lea popped her head into the supply closet. I had gone straight to work after I left Oliver’s office. I needed a distraction, any distraction, to take me away from the bubbling sadness that threatened to unravel me. 

“Sorry. I’m coming.”

“Are you okay?” she asked, walking closer. 

“Why do you even care? You haven’t spoken to me in months.”

Indeed this was the closest I had seen Lea since last summer. The first words she had spoken to me that were not cut with cold air. She had dyed her hair red again, the bright strands glinting under the fluorescent lights, but even then I could see the slight hints of blue that remained, shining only when she turned her head to look at me, as if threatening me to say, _one wrong word, one wrong glance, and in a moment the frigidity will return._

She sat down next to me, leaning her back against the burlap sacks of coffee beans behind us. I wanted to reach out, to touch her to see if the red haired girl I had known for so long was truly there, but it seemed impossible to repair this relationship when another had become so broken. For a moment I wished she would yell and scream and cut the air with so much of her frigidity that I would die from the slice of her blade and it would all be over. 

“It’s over with you and Oliver, isn’t it.” 

I was silent, but in the silence she heard my response. Her tone had an air of finality that told me this wasn’t a question, but a statement she knew for a fact. A statement we both knew for a fact. 

“I’m sorry I’ve been so distant. I just didn’t know how to tell you this.” Lea sighed, as her hand reached behind her into her bag, and emerged with a bottle of beer. 

“Tell me what?”

“Last year, you remember I was trying to get into Parsons?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I had an art teacher. She was helping me with my portfolio. And I fell in love with her, completely and irrevocably. And when she decided she wanted to marry a man I didn’t think I would ever recover from that-” she paused, thinking of what to say, how much to reveal. 

“She said to me once, that no matter what happens, don't say you never knew.”

Lea sipped her beer, trying to cover the tears pooling at her lids with the glass bottle.

“At the time I wondered, how could she possibly ask that of me, when she knows every touch she has laid on my skin, every smile she has shone my way, has made it impossible to forget?”

“But perhaps she said it because she knew she was going to break my heart, break it until it was unrecognizable, like it was putty in her hands, like it was a stain on her shirt that she could wipe away with the wipe of a napkin. Perhaps she just wanted me to remember when it was more than that, when my heart meant everything to her.”

She paused, tugging at the earrings in her lobes.

“And Elio, one more thing. I know I have been so distant, so cold to you, and I’m sorry. I think you know me better than I know myself, and I value your friendship more than you will ever know. But the reason is because this woman, this woman who ruined me, it is Marisol. It is Oiver’s fiance. And when I saw her on that first day in the coffee shop, I felt as if the world blew out from under me and I had no idea how to react. And then when you began speaking to Oliver all the anger and resentment that had been building up inside me suddenly came out and you were the only person there to experience the force of it. I’m sorry, you didn’t deserve that.”

I had never felt smaller in my entire life. All the nights I spent huddled in my bed, angry at the cards life dealt me that I did not know how to play, Lea had been dealt the same deck. And yet she played with grace, with dignity, not wallowed in her own self-pity as I had been. 

She put her hand on my cheek, and I felt impossibly smaller under her fingers. 

“How did you get over it?” I whispered.

“Memories are useless without manifestation, and yet it is memory that controls us. Perhaps in the end, it is because of memory that we suffer.”

She sighed, bringing her arm around my shoulders. 

“Some memories are like ghosts, they never die.” she said, “But you learn how to find beauty in the haunting.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!   
> So this chapter is told from Lea's perspective, right after her conversation with Elio. I've fallen in love with her character, and I know a lot of you guys love her too, so I wanted to go into her mind for a bit :)
> 
> As always, thank you for the comments and support, means so much to me. Please drop a comment and let me know how you think the story is going <3

~ Lea ~

Walking up to the glass doors of her apartment building, I wondered if it was fear or excitement that was coursing through my veins. 

Perhaps it was neither. 

Perhaps it was both.

I rang her apartment number.

“Hello?”

“Hi Marisol. It’s Lea. Can I come up?”

“Lea!”

Did it upset me that she was surprised? Or did it upset me that my name from her lips no longer sounded the same?

“Oh, Oliver went out to get groceries, he will be back any minute. I’ll come down.”

“Okay.”

Night had just begun to fall over the city. The sunlight outside was dimming, but the lights in the windows remained bright. 

Was I being reckless? _Yes._

Was I being selfish? _Yes._

Would I regret this? _Perhaps._

But would I regret it more if I never did this? _Definitely._

“Lea! How wonderful to see you!” 

Blonde hair coiffed into a bun. Blue eyes glinting. Beautiful in the perfectly American way that seems effortless but has taken hours to formulate. Maybe even years. 

What a picture we must look. Like a jigsaw puzzle with one piece broken. 

“What has taken you so long? I haven’t seen you in years!”

“Cut the shit Marisol. We both know why it’s taken me so long. We both know why I’m here.”

Her fake smile dropped.

“Must you always be so frank?” she sighed. 

“Must you always be so vague?” 

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Well you did. And you have to live with that.”

She paused, caught off guard. For a moment I saw the girl who had sat with me in that library three years ago, the girl who always has a pencil in her hand, glasses resting on the tip of her nose, a smattering of freckles blurred by the lens. The girl who was vulnerable, afraid of what the future would bring but even more afraid of what the present entailed. The girl who had yet to become the woman society shaped her to be. For a moment, as Marisol raised her fingers to her nose bridge, impulsively pushing up a pair of glasses that were no longer there, over a nose whose freckles have been caked over with foundation, I saw that girl again. 

But it was only for a moment. 

“Lea, you see life as if it is technicolor. Life is not technicolor. Sometimes life is just black and white and you have to make decisions you don’t like. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can save yourself from a lot of pain.”

“Is that what you really believe? That life is made of colors that may appear beautiful, but are not really there? Is that really who you are? What you want?”

She was silent.

“Do you like him?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Oliver.”

“Oliver? He is my fiance. Of course I love him.”

“I didn’t ask you if you love him. I asked you if you like him.”

She looked up at me. She knew exactly what I meant. 

“Lea-”

* * *

_“-you have to pay attention to the shading here, make sure your angle corresponds with the rays of the sunlight.”_

_I scoffed at her, taking back the pencil._

_“It’s supposed to be abstract, Marisol, it’s not supposed to make sense.” I said, erasing the line she made and drawing back my own._

_“Everything has to make sense. Even abstract things.”_

_“If everyone only saw beauty in things that made sense, nothing would ever be interesting.”_

_“And what about being relatable? Creating art that is not so difficult to find beauty in?”_

_“I would rather be interesting than relatable.”_

_Marisol pondered my words for a moment._

_“And what is wrong with being relatable?”_

_“Nothing. If that is what you really are.”_

_“And what if that is not what one really is?”_

_“Then one is only pretending, and that is just a shame.”_

_She chucked at my response._

_“I usually don’t like people who break the rules for the sake of being interesting.” she said._

_“So you don’t like me?”_

_I had meant it as a joke, Marisol and I had been working together for so many months now that it seemed stupid to even toy with the idea she didn’t like me. But she looked up and stared at me for so long that I realized her response was anything but a joke._

_“I like you.” she said, “Very much.”_

* * *

“I know that you love him. He is your fiance. But that was not my question. Do you like him?”

She was silent.

I looked at her and remembered all the moments we had sat in the library, going over shading or perspective or some artistic concept I hadn’t fully grasped yet. All the moments the fluorescent lights above danced on her blonde strands, and I felt like the moon slowly descending to make room for the sun. All the moments I forgot she was a teacher and I was a student, for it simply felt like two old friends enjoying the warmth of each other’s company. 

Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. 

Yet perhaps that is what lovers are. 

Hours seemed to pass without either of us saying a word. The weight of the question hung in the air, saturating the oxygen with anticipation. And right before I was about to give up and walk away, she spoke so softly and quietly I almost thought I had imagined it. 

“No. Perhaps not. Not the way I liked you.”

“Marisol?”

We both looked up to see Oliver rounding the corner with bags of groceries in his hands. His eyes darted to Marisol, then to me. For a moment, despite his frame, he looked like a small child who had heard something he wasn’t supposed to. 

What did he hear? 

How much did he hear? 

_(Hopefully enough.)_


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!  
> So this chapter is told from Oliver's perspective (don't worry, we will go back to Elio soon, I miss him too)   
> We are almost at the end! Thank you to everyone for reading, I honestly never thought so many people would read this! 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your comments and support <3

~ Oliver ~

_Success._

What a funny word. Growing up, you didn’t really know what it meant.

It had always been tossed around at family events, where the adults drank too much wine and blabbered on about who was successful and who was not, and as the small child you were back then, you soaked it all up and vowed to yourself you would do anything you could to become successful. Whatever that meant. 

But then one day, when you were in high school, your father took you to a work conference, just to show you the ins and outs of the family business. And his colleagues looked at you as if you were god himself, 6 foot 5 and already abnormally handsome. They showered you with praise and approval, encouraging you that if you worked _just_ hard enough, you would grow up to be as successful as your father. And you saw the beaming smile on your father’s face, as if your height and your intelligence and your beauty were a product of his actions alone, and in a way, perhaps they were. 

And as soon as their approval glossed your skin you became addicted to it. You fed off their attention as if it was the air you breathed and you wondered how you lived so long without this drug. 

“How handsome your son is!” _(just one more hit)_

“Already a heartbreaker!” _(just one more hit)_

“You are going to do great things in life!” _(just one more hit)_

“The sky's the limit for you!” _(please, please, just one more hit.)_

And in that moment, you suddenly knew what success meant. 

You walked away a junkie for affirmation. You studied hard, went to a good college. All the girls on campus thought you were handsome, but you picked the prettiest one and decided to make her your fiance. You moved in with her and she cooked you breakfast on Sunday mornings and made sure you took a granola bar with you when you left for work. You thought this might be what happiness felt like because she actually listened to you when you spoke and gave you the affirmation you needed to stay high off it. And at night she told you she loved you and you said it back, because you did. 

Then one day your father called you and told you he had decided to hand off the family business to your brother, because he thought you were too weak to handle it. He had always preferred your brother anyway. And suddenly everything you have worked for, everything you thought success meant, dropped out from under you. The withdrawal of his approval made you an addict that just went cold turkey. 

But then you met _him._

His green eyes were the first thing you noticed about him, as they stared at you above the counter of the coffee shop. They were green the way the ocean was when you were swimming too far from shore on a clear summer day. You heard your mother screaming for you against the backdrop of the sweating sun but you kept on swimming until all the people on shore disappeared into sea salt and sun tan lotion, and all you saw were the yellow beams of sunlight that beat into the water, swallowing up all the blue and slicing it with emerald gems. 

You were exact opposites. Where your hair was straight and blonde, his was tightly curled and dark. Where you were strong and muscular, he was delicate and slight. Where your writing was tightlipped and conservative, his flowed from his pen as if he was cutting a vein, exposing his blood for the world to see. 

And yet, life had shown you both the same cruelty. And you think perhaps this is what makes you the same. 

You think you might just end it all, move away from this meaningless city with its meaningless streets filled with meaningless people and just be with him. Move away from the drug of approval that tempts you from every corner, threatening to seize you and make you an addict once again.

But then your father calls you one night, and tells you,

“I am proud of you Oliver.” _(just one more hit)_

“I’ve read your dissertation. You have been doing wonderful work.” _(just one more hit)_

“I am happy with the life choices you have made.” _(just one more hit)_

“Marisol is a wonderful woman. I hope the wedding is soon.” _(please, please, just one more hit.)_

Once an addict, always an addict. 

But then you see Elio’s red headed friend outside your apartment, and for a moment your heart sings because you think maybe he has come back to try to change your mind. 

For a split second, the world turns technicolor and you see the rest of your life play out before your eyes. 

_People asking you, twenty years from now, how you fell in love with your wife. How you knew she was the one._

_And you sit there and spew some bullshit, say_ I knew the second I saw her _or_ it was the way she looked at me, _and when all these meaningless people asking meaningless questions are gone you and your wife will go home and she will ask you if there is someone else, because_ you have been so distant lately _and you once again will sit there and lie because you are too much of a coward to tell her that she, all along, has been the someone else._

_And so you will live your meaningless life until you are on your deathbed, and you are looking up at all these meaningless people with whom you have shared your meaningless life, and you will realize the only face that has meaning, the only face that has ever had meaning, is absent. And as much as you wish you could find that pair of sparkling green eyes surrounded by a mop of curly hair, you just can’t, because they had disappeared the moment you gave into your addiction._

You overhear her conversation with Marisol and you think you should be upset. Angry, even. Your entire life, which you have formulated with mind numbing precision, was suddenly set ablaze. 

But you don’t feel upset. You don’t feel angry. Not even a little bit. 

In fact, you think perhaps this is what happiness actually feels like because the tightness in your chest has finally absolved. You are no longer afraid of the future because you no longer know what it entails. 

And suddenly you realize, perhaps you are not addicted to approval. Perhaps approval is simply the drug you take to escape from the reality you resent. 

Perhaps you were wrong about success all along.

Perhaps it is time to take a step away. 

Perhaps, once and for all, it is time to get sober.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONE MORE CHAPTER UNTIL THE END :o
> 
> I have the last chapter written out already, I'll post it soon. 
> 
> But for now, I just wanted to say thank you to all who have been reading, writing this has truly been such a wonderful journey and I am so grateful for all of your lovely comments and support. I've started so many fanfictions in the past, but I've never finished any of them except for this one, and I could not have done it without you guys. Thank you thank you thank you for reading <3
> 
> PS. im so sad that archive of our own doesn't have private messaging, if anyone wants to be penpals and talk about CMBYN or honestly anything at all, I would love that so much. Also would love anyone's tips on how to improve my writing, I am still a student and although writing is not a career for me, it is one of my most treasured hobbies and I would love to know how to be better. My (anon) email is ghostwriter12345678@yahoo.com.

There are days when gray clouds cover the sky, slinking over clear blue, suffocating the yellow sun. But on these days still, there are sparkling rays that fidget their way through the masses, somehow finding their way to an undeserving Earth. 

Today was one of those days. I fought the heaviness in my chest as I loaded the coffee machine, while Lea organized the muffins under the counter. It was as if grey clouds had floated down from the sky, jingled through the glass doors, came into this coffee shop to suffocate us all, telling me _When you leave for Crema tomorrow morning, you know who will not be there._

But suddenly there was a ray of sun, a ray that somehow found its way amongst the masses. 

“Elio.”

“Oliver.”

It had been months since I had seen him last, yet every glance was as visceral and heartbreaking as the first. He walked up to the counter, placed his hands by the register. 

I couldn't stop my eyes from glancing down to his left hand. 

No ring. 

“You are leaving for Crema tomorrow morning.”

“Yes.”

“And when you come back…”

“When I come back…” _(this will all be over.)_

Silence. In the silence hung words unsaid. But what hung heavier were the words that both of us wanted to say. 

“I still read the Bukowski novel you gave me. Every day.” I finally said, if only to fill the suffocating silence. “I don’t know if you remember giving that to me.”

“I remember. Of course I remember.”

“Of course you remember,” I echoed. _(What else do you remember?)_

He looked up at me, and smiled. Had he read my mind?

“I’m like you,” he said. “I remember everything.”

I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you really are like me, then before you walk out that glass door and jingle the bells behind you, or before I leave tomorrow morning, after I’ve packed every bag and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and as you did so many moons ago, 

look me in the face, 

hold my gaze,

and call me by your name. 

And when you did just that, I knew you had read my mind. 

* * * * * * * * * *

“Oliver! I am so glad you could make it.”

Papa reached out with open arms, and even though he was a good head shorter than Oliver, was somehow able to envelop him. 

“It’s good to be here, Pro!”

“Pro! You are the only student who has ever called me that!” my father chuckled. 

I watched silently from the taxi for a moment, before stepping onto the cobblestone pavement. The familiar crunch of the gravel, and the familiar smell of oxygen laced with fresh primrose and apricots, the sight of the old stone house that loomed over the sea, my mother with her rosy perfume surrounding me, it was all here.

I was home. 

“You boys must be so exhausted from your trip, why don’t you go upstairs and rest for a bit before dinner.” my mother poked and prodded until I relinquished my bag into her hands.

“We can rest later, there is somewhere I want to take Oliver before the sun sets.”

“Where are we going?” 

“You’ll see.”

* * * * * * * * * *

“This,” I dropped my bike against the tree, “is the spot where Monet came to paint. I’ve never taken anyone here before.”

Tiny, stunted palm trees and gnarled olive trees studded the copse. Then through the trees, on an incline leading toward the very edge of the cliff, was a knoll partly shaded by tall marine pines. I lead Oliver toward the soundless, quiet cove. There was not a sign of civilization anywhere, just two bodies in a cloudless sky, connected by the electricity that ran between them. 

“This is my spot. All mine. I come here to read. I can’t tell you the number of books I’ve read here.”

“It’s beautiful.” he closed his eyes, raising his face toward the unencumbered sun, as he sat down into the grass. 

“I never asked you, but what made you change your mind?”

“About us?”

“About us.”

“My mind was always made up.”

“You know what I mean.”

Oliver laid in the grass, stretched his arms out behind his head.

“Marisol and I were two people that society pushed together in some insane attempt to make something beautiful, and perhaps on the outside that was what it seemed. A young, beautiful couple, from good families, engaged to be married. But in reality, we were strangers who were condemned to a life of mediocrity because we were both too afraid of the alternative. But when she met Lea, and when I met you, the alternative became too enticing to ignore.”

“You and Marisol. A parallel life, perhaps.” I chuckled. 

“A parallel life indeed. Perhaps it would have been more of a coma.” 

He paused for a moment, as if pondering the sanctity of his own words. 

“Yes, Marisol and I, the life we would have shared, it would have been a coma from which it would have been harder to wake with each passing day. And yet we would try to call it love, because to see it for what it really was would break our hearts.”

“A coma,” I let his words roll over my tongue. “And what is this? What are we if not just another parallel life?”

“Seeing you, it is like waking from a coma. And the possibility of living in a world without you fills me only with regret. To think of us as if we were strangers, who met one day in a midtown coffee shop, who touched each others’ lives only for a brief moment, only to have the both of us go on with the remainder of our lives forever dipping our cotton swabs into that bowl of happiness, never daring to take more than a droplet at a time, never daring to take a sip, never daring to think of the possibility that our bowls could be replenished, always fearing that we’d use it up. Just fooling ourselves by remaining content with the vision of us that will always be stuck in the crumbs of the muffins in that coffee shop, the vision that sticks with us wherever we go. And that is how I know this, us, is not a parallel life.” 

Silence. 

“Memories are useless without manifestation, and yet it is memory that controls us. Perhaps in the end, it is because of memory that we suffer.” I echoed Lea’s words, “Perhaps we needn’t be a memory. Perhaps this life is reality, and all the others only try to imitate it.”

Oliver smiled, turning his face upward toward the sun.

“I love this, Elio.”

I chucked, closing my eyes and relishing in the feel of his warm body next to mine, and the pulsating waves of sunshine that beat red against my eyelids. 

“It's not bad. Not bad.” I smirked. _(I love this too, Oliver.)_

I heard him rustle the grass beside me, felt his looming shadow obstruct the heat of the sun. I felt fingers tracing my lips back and forth, with a touch so light I thought I might have been imagining it. 

But the time for imagination has long passed. This, finally, is real. 

“I love you, Elio.”

My eyes shot open, and suddenly Oliver was so close. One tilt of the neck and we would be one. But for a moment, if only because this all felt too good to be true, I paused. 

“Don’t tell me you love me if it is only with the idea of me.”

He stopped for a second and looked down. My heart dropped.

But then he looked up and said “The idea of you is what scares me the most. If I was only in love with the idea of you I would’ve run the other direction the second I saw you in that coffee shop. It is this very idea of you that has completely uprooted the constant trajectory of my life, throwing me off course into a realm I do not know the destination of. The idea of you dances around my mind, tossing and turning with reckless abandon, like an image suddenly come to life that threatens to kill everything in its path. I am terrified of the idea of you. But Elio, loving you, everything you are, is what gives me life. And if dying a thousand times is the price to pay for living a thousand more, I would say it is a bargain.”

For a moment the world ceased to turn on its axis. I buried my wet eyes into the collar of his shirt and cried until all the moisture left my body and the only thing remaining was a glowing warmth in my chest that flowed all the way to my fingertips to my toes to my eyelids. 

I feel the spots on my shoulder blades, where white wings used to sprout, grown for me by my proud father and adoring mother who believed that even the sun was too weak to melt these golden wings they had cultivated their whole lives. Yet as I soared higher and higher, with wings made of feathers and wax, I did not have the strength to shield the burning rays, and I could only watch as I fell, melting into the sea.

There was pain before, a needle on each shoulder blade that pierced to the bone. Yet as time passed, the pain transcended into emptiness, and then the emptiness was flooded by the pristine waters I had fallen into. 

For now I realize, Icarus had to fall to meet Poseiden, who took his broken wings and let them flow away into the water. Who gave him the oxygen he needed to survive in this wet, dark place, and showed him that even though falling meant you could no longer fly with the birds in the sky, you were now free to swim with the fish in the ocean. 

And here, deep under the surface, the sun shines its rays into the water to remind me of a time when its light was my demise. But now my Poseiden is by my side, and the light no longer scares me for he has taught me to swim toward it. 

And as I push my face impossibly closer into Oliver’s collarbone, swallowing down the smell of him that I know I will keep with me in the years to come, I think about Icarus’ story. Long told to us by worried parents and shy philosophers, to scare us from the side of our beings that screamed at us to take risks, to live fully, to fly as close to the sun as our wings will take us. Long told to us to prevent us from falling into a watery demise from the dreams that had taken us too high. But now I am thinking, perhaps the story of Icarus is not a tragedy. Perhaps his fall into the ocean gave him new dreams, and a new light, that took him to a realm he had never known before. 

And now I am thinking, perhaps the story of Icarus had a happy ending after all.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ END NOTES

_*2020, New York City*_

_Bookstore on the corner of Lexington and 41st._

“And sometimes I wonder,

If we had met in a different time,

In a different place,

Somewhere where all the stars were aligned,

Would we still have reached for them?

Summer 2020

Somewhere in New York City.”

Elio read the first page of his novel aloud to the wide-eyed young faces that looked up at him. What he would give to be so young and beautiful again, eyes full of dreams for the possibilities to come. 

His life had already played out. He was an old man now. His 50th birthday was last week, and he had spent it sipping champagne and eating caviar with the top publishing company in New York. It was a vast improvement from his 49th, which he had spent drinking too much wine and writing a novel about a love displaced from its origin in 1987 Crema, in the hope that its new home in 2020 New York City would bring a different conclusion. 

He wrote about all the things he wished he had said. All the things he wished he had done. All the knowledge he had learned about love in the thirty seven years since he had seen Oliver last, that he wished he had known when the love of his life was still in his grasp. He wrote about how the rose of their love continued to bloom in the darkness, cultivated by a world that welcomed such flowers in its garden. He wrote about what he wished had happened, instead of watching Oliver steal a sad glance back at him before the train took off at Cusoni, never to return. 

“You are an absolute inspiration, Mr.Perlman. I cannot tell you how much this book has changed my life.” 

“Thank you so much, I am so glad you enjoyed it.” Elio said with a smile, handing a signed copy of his novel to the young boy in the flannel. 

“I have to ask you, everything in the novel is written in such a poignant way, and you even use your own name as the narrator. What elements of your story have been taken from your own experiences as a gay man in New York City?”

Elio chuckled. He had been asked this question numerous times since his short story exploded into a bestseller last May. It had been an utter shock, how his passion project seemed to touch the lives of millions when the music he spent years transcribing barely left a mark. But perhaps he hadn’t realized his experiences were far from singular. 

Perhaps the overbearing love and loss he felt connected us all. 

“Yes, absolutely. As you can see, I am an old man now. Things were not so progressive as I was growing up. In my younger years, there was a man whom I loved very dearly. We met in a tiny town in Italy, nearly forty years ago, not in modern day New York as the book says. Back then, people did not speak of these things, it was seen in many ways as an abomination. I suppose he did not want to be seen that way by the outside world, and he left after a summer. Our love was beautiful, and real, but the stars were not aligned for it to flourish. And that is okay, I’ve accepted that. Love does not simply disappear when it ends. Indeed, only when it ends, can you grow from it.”

Elio could see the boy’s eyes begin to tear, but he continued. 

“And I wrote this book to tell young men and women like you: look at the world around you, look at all of its beauty, its acceptance, its love. When you feel overwhelmed, when you think things are difficult, remember all the progress we have made, and all the progress we will make. The world thirty years ago was far less kind, it killed my love, and it would have killed yours too. But we do not live in such a world anymore, and for that, I am grateful. And I truly believe, if I had entered into another life, if I had been born today and we had met on the streets of this beautiful city, our love would have survived, just as it did in the book, and just as I am sure yours will.”

The boy in the flannel, eyes red-rimmed and mouth gaping slightly open, thanked him in a soft voice. He clutched both of Elio’s hands, the fingertips calloused and rough from endless nights of typing, in his, and gave them a soft shake before clutching his book to his chest and returning into the arms of another young boy at the door. 

Elio flipped to the last page of his novel, as if to remind himself of the truth in his own words. 

_And now I know,_

_If we had met in a different time,_

_In a different place,_

_Somewhere where all the stars were aligned,_

_We would have grasped them,_

_And never let go._

He smiled as he whispered them aloud to himself, for he knew they were true. 

Elio was so lost in thought, he hardly noticed when the bells on the glass door to the bookstore jingled, and a tall figure dressed in a billowy blue shirt walked over to his table. 

“Can you spare the time for another autograph, Mr.Perlman?”

The voice.

The attitude. 

Elio didn’t have to look up to know who it was. 

And looking down at the last page of the personal copy of his own novel, at the bottom of the paper where he had written in red ink on a lonely night after two and a half bottles of wine: _“For Oliver, in silence”_ , he thought:

perhaps Elio needed to see Oliver leaving on that train in Clusone, 

perhaps Oliver needed to marry a woman he fell out of love with years ago, 

perhaps Elio needed to spend thirty seven years consumed by a pair of blue eyes and a set of white underarms,

and perhaps they needed to meet in a world full of judgemental glances and unacceptance, 

for them to realize this love was one for the stars.

and perhaps, just _perhaps_ , they had met at just the right time. 

in just the right place. 

And here, in this bookstore in downtown Manhattan, with the cars honking outside and people pushing past each other on the streets under a sweltering summer sun, thirty seven years after they lost the stars they had found in each other in Italy,

they would find them once again,

but this time they would hold onto them,

and never let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello hello!  
> I hope you all don't hate me for this ending, I honestly had it planned out since the beginning, and I personally love it, so I hope you all do too :)
> 
> Please please leave a comment and let me know what you think about the ending, I would love to hear your thoughts. 
> 
> Once again, what a journey this has been, thank you to everyone who has stuck through with me to the very end, and don't hesitate to email me if you want to ramble about CMBYN and the depression it has given all of us. Thank you all for reading, you are all such wonderful people <3


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